When Your Sins Are Too Big...

The book of Genesis calls the serpent the most shrewd of God's creation. An expert deceiver, he will play off of everything God does and everything that exists to distort the truth and mislead us. He hates us just because he hates God, so he hates all that God loves. The devil will never tell an outright lie, because then no one would believe it. It is always mixed with truth in order to make it more believable. It is always a distortion of truth. He is the most shrewd of all creatures and the epitome of all evil and vice.

One thing the devil especially hates is the Mercy of God, because by it he looses the souls that serve him by committing sins. When we realize that we have lived our whole lives in sin, unfaithful to what God told us to do, the devil will lie and say that we can never be forgiven. He will say that sure, sins can be forgiven, but that our sin, regardless of what it is, is always too large to be forgiven. It can never be completely eliminated. We can get rid of parts of it, but can never remove all of it. He says that this is how we have set up our lives. Our lives has been spent on sin to the point that to be forgiven, we would have to change so much of our lives. The devil says that no one could ever expect our lives to change that much without being crazy, could they? He says that our lives have already been lived and were spent completely on this sin. There is no way of getting that part of our lives back. The devil says that the only way to remove the sin completely would be to go back in time and prevent the sin from being committed, but that there is no way to go back and try again. We are stuck with our past and can't get rid of it or change it. We only live once and what we have done is permanent. If you wasted your life on sin, there is no going back and trying again. If your sin had been small, it would be possible, but your sin is too large to be forgiven.

The thing is, the devil always says that regardless of how big your sin was. It is always too big, and the only forgivable sins are always smaller than whatever you did. It is always the same lie, regardless of the size of the sin. It is always a lie, regardless of the size of the sin. He says that no one can expect us to change everything about our lives, but that's because he doesn't want us to change at all. God wants us to change our lives completely to serve Him. The devil counters with a lie that those who want us to change only want a personal gain. These attacks from the devil and relentless. He is literally merciless. The only way we can survive the devil's lies that he puts in our heads is to put on the armor of God as St. Paul tells us today that we "may be able to resist in the evil day, and to stand in all things perfect."

The most vital part of this armor is trust in God's mercy. In the end, God will expose the truth. All will be revealed on the last day. The virtuous will go to Heaven and the sinner will go to Hell. All will be made clear. It will be revealed what was God's will for us all along. It will be revealed what God wanted from us as a whole and from us individually. What we believe by faith now, we shall see face to face then. Those who have been in sin, will all be exposed and cast into Hell. It will be revealed that they were wrong and living in their heads all along and their existence will be reduced to nothing but perpetual pain that has no end.

Those who left sin and made themselves clean in the Blood of the Lamb, will be revealed as having had all their sins removed from them and made clean. They were evil and sinful, but now the only thing that still exists is a pure and holy person. They were as scarlet, but were made white as snow. They are now clean. All their sins have been removed. God forgives even the greatest sin like the king in today's Gospel who forgave the greatest debt. They wasted their lives on sin, but that has been removed from them. They have separated themselves from evil and anyone who tries to say that the previously existing sin really is a part of their lives and who they are is just trying to re-attach their sins and living in the past. The past doesn't matter. It no longer exists. We are not judged based on our entire life. That is one of the devil's lies. To say that would be a denial of God's Mercy since we cannot change our past so thus could never convert. One mistake you would be guaranteed to go to Hell. We are judged based only on our condition right now. It doesn't matter how sinful your whole life was, but only how sinful you are the moment you die. God is always calling us to make ourselves more pure. God is always calling us to convert. We are always capable of changing. We are always capable of becoming better.

It is truly meet to bless thee O Theotokos, ever blessed and most pure and the Mother of Our God. More honorable than the Cherubim and by far more glorious than the Seraphim, without corruption thou didst bear God the Word. True Theotokos we magnify thee!